An explanation of the previous post

In the previous post (go read it first), I described a vision I often have. I also wanted to talk about what inspires this vision, but didn't feel like it would fit in with that piece of writing.

An image was recently released of the oldest galaxy in the visible universe. It is 12.8 billion light years away. Our own sun is only 4.5 billion light years old. When the light from this galaxy was emitted in a billion fiery nuclear furnaces, our Sun was still 8.3 billion years away from being a twinkle in the Milky Way's eye.

That galaxy no longer exists. At least, not in the form we can observe. Time has shaped it. Its gas clouds have condensed into stars and planets. Civilizations probably rose and fell. Stars spent their fuel and collapsed, colliding with each other and forming into black holes, and eventually there was darkness. But we won't see that for another 12.8 billion years, at which point our own sun will be dust in the galatic winds.

It takes our sun, Sol, 220 million years to make its way around the Milky Way. If you imagine each rotation around the milky way as a "sun year" (as we refer to dog years), that puts our sun in its prime at the age of 20. At just 45 "sun years", or 10-billion Earth years, our sun will run out of fuel and become a red giant, engulfing the inner planets.

The oldest known living tree was 5,000 years old when it was cut down unknowingly.

We already know the average human life span.

A female mosquito can live up to 100 days. Males, up to 20.

If a 20 day life of a mosquito seems irrelevant to us, just think how we must feel to the universe.